To George Washington from Thomas Jefferson, 14 February 1793
From Thomas Jefferson
[Philadelphia] Feb. 14. 93.
Th: Jefferson with his respects to the President sends him a letter from Mr Short.1
Also a circular letter he has written to the foreign ministers at Philadelphia, in order to place his Report on commerce on safe ground as to them.2
Also a copy of the statement of the French debt as furnished me by mister Ternant.3
AL, DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters; LB, DNA: RG 59, George Washington’s Correspondence with His Secretaries of State; LB (photocopy), DLC:GW. Tobias Lear’s note at the bottom of the AL, “a letter To Mr Ellicott,” refers to a piece of correspondence Jefferson enclosed in his second letter to GW of this date.
1. For William Short’s letter to Jefferson of 16 Nov. 1792, in which the U.S. minister to The Hague described affairs in Europe and French military victories, see 24:624–25.
2. For Jefferson’s circular letter to the British, French, Dutch, and Spanish foreign ministers of 13 Feb. 1793 and the ministers’ replies, see ibid., 25:184–89, 199–202, 205–6, 211, 253–54. Jefferson enclosed the responses from the British, French, and Spanish ministers, as well as his replies to them, in his letters to GW of 16 and 17 February. For Jefferson’s submission to GW of a draft of his report on American commerce, see GW to Jefferson, 12 Feb., and note 2.
3. Jefferson wrote the final paragraph of this letter directly above the dateline at the bottom of the AL. Ternant had enclosed his “Tableau redigé en decembre 1789. de la créance de France, sur les Etats unis” in a letter to Jefferson of 9 Feb. ( 25:164). On 15 Feb., GW gave Ternant’s statement to Alexander Hamilton ( 54).